Review: Godthrymm – A Grand Reclamation

The debut EP from a band containing current and former members of My Dying Bride, Anathema, Vallenfyre and Solstice? Epic doom from the UK? I am SO in on Godthrymm. Their debut ‘A Grand Reclamation’ is out now through Transcending Records and oozes with promise.

The title track opens with forlorn acoustic guitar, before an iconic ‘Yorkshire doom’ riff kicks in and the powerful vocals of Hamish Glencross drags you to the miserable moors. Ominous bass rumbles beneath these sermons of doom, and Godthrymm touch on all their influences but don’t sound like any of them. There’s no sorrowful violins (well ok, a little in ‘The Pantheon’ but it isn’t overbearing), there’s no morbid deathly crush, there’s no progressive bent. This is classic British doom that draws back to the lonely heaviness of Sabbath. The propulsive ‘Sacred Soil’ is at once a lumbering mythical beast and a mournful lament, carried once more by the strong vocals.

Closing with ‘Forevermore’, a soothing instrumental to bring you down after the heaving, roiling mass of ‘The Pantheon’, Godthrymm exceed the sum of their parts. They are looking to invigorate British doom through stalwart traditionalism, and not since the glory days of ‘Icon’, ‘Turn Loose the Swans’ and ‘The Silent Enigma’ has doom sounded so epic, so heavy, so BRITISH!